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The Rev. Mike O’Grady of South Cumminsville doesn’t take freedom lightly. He lost his for three months after illegally crossing onto the U.S. Army base at Fort Benning, Ga., for a political demonstration.
O’Grady participated in a protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).
His act of civil disobedience landed him in the Muscogee County Jail; in February he finished serving 90 days for trespassing.
O’Grady, a member of the Claver Jesuit Community, says he set aside some of his First World freedom to act in solidarity with his Third World friends in Latin America, whose freedom and lives are threatened by SOA graduates.
The SOA, which opened in 1963, changed its name to the WHISC in 2001. It trains 700-1,000 Latin Americans a year to help fight the war on drugs and encourage democratic principles in the region, according to the U.S. Defense Department. Among the SOA’s alumni are dictators such as Manuel Noriega of Panama, now serving a federal prison term for drug trafficking.
Orders from the president
SOA Watch, which seeks to close WHISC, says hundreds of human rights violations are linked to SOA graduates who use U.S. military training to kill off resistance and overthrow democratically elected governments.
The movement to close the school is personal for O’Grady and many other Jesuits. In 1989, Salvadoran army personnel trained at the SOA murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador.
With thousands of others, O’Grady attended a November 2003 vigil at the military base, marking the anniversary of those murders. Military police had anticipated the annual rally and set up temporary fencing. O’Grady and 26 others crossed the fence, and military police promptly arrested them.
“My intention was to enter the school and occupy it to prevent it from causing further harm,” O’Grady says.
Those who crossed the fence received sentences ranging from probation to six months in prison. O’Grady, 41, pleaded not guilty to force the government to make its case. He says the judge failed to take into consideration the motives behind his actions, which he compares to trespassing to save a child from a burning house.
“Under the same moral calculus, South and Central America are on fire,” he says. “The SOA is the agent that is spreading this oppression and violence and human rights abuses.”
Other defendants quoted President Bush’s address to the United Nations following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Every known terrorist camp must be shut down,” Bush said.
Protesters who crossed the fence say they simply obeyed orders from the commander in chief.
While O’Grady sat in jail, his friends continued their attempts to close the school.
Xavier University graduate student Stephanie Beck Borden and others met with U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Cincinnati). They petitioned his support for House Bill 1258, which calls for a suspension of WHISC activities and an investigation into its practices.
So far the bill has 120 co-sponsors. Neither Chabot nor U.S. Rep. Rob Portman (R-Terrace Park) is among them.
Anger isn’t enough
Supporters of the school say significant changes have been made since 2001.
“WHISC is a successor to the SOA, but it’s not the same,” says Lee Rials, public affairs officer for the school. “If you actually look at curriculum offerings, there are significant differences.”
He says there is no evidence linking U.S. training of foreign troops and officers to any crimes they committed later. In addition to an increased human rights curriculum, Rials says the school is open to outside scrutiny. He invites civilians, including members of SOA Watch, to observe any class at the school. He also says a federal committee, which includes members of Congress, human rights workers and religious leaders, oversees and reviews the school’s practices.
But O’Grady and SOA Watch characterize the changes as merely cosmetic.
“Changing the name of the school is an absolutely wonderful ploy,” O’Grady says. “The arguments that are made to keep the school funded and operating are good arguments, essentially democratic arguments. But the facts belie the cover story.”
SOA Watch points to Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vincente Rangel’s announcement in February that Venezuela would stop sending troops to WHISC. Several Venezuelan SOA graduates were key players in the coup attempt against democratically elected President Hugo Chavez in 2002, according to SOA Watch.
The bill that would shut down WHISC, known as the Latin America Military Training Review Act, is pending in the House Committee on Armed Services, where it awaits comment from the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, O’Grady says he has a moral obligation to return to Fort Benning for this year’s anniversary vigil.
“This affects me personally,” he says. “I have friends and colleagues that are at direct and immediate risk of being threatened by the grads coming out of this institution. I’ve come to recognize that I can’t continue to just read about it and study it and think about it and get angry about it.
“What I really have to do is try to stop it and put my freedom, comforts and security on the line in whatever way I can in this First World context to act in solidarity with friends that are in the Third World.” ©
This article appears in May 5-11, 2004.